Thursday, September 14, 2006--Evening

Waking up, well, right after I wake up is the hardest part of the day for me. I would say that morning is the worst part of the day, but often I sleep until the afternoon. When I wake up I feel negativity—resentments, fears, all sorts of bad imaginings—come over me like a blinding fog. In the shower and getting dressed I often have to remind myself that my feelings aren’t accurate, that I will—if I put effort into it—feel better soon. So I start to nudge my thoughts toward thankfulness. I easily slip back into destructive thoughts—arguing with the girl at the coffee shop, telling my students to go to hell, wanting to kill other drivers on the streets—and I haven’t even left the bedroom.

But I keep directing and redirecting my thoughts until they turn lighter, until I can laugh at my previous self and my destructive thinking. But some days it is much harder to dig out of that space, especially when I’m tired (I suffer from Chronic Fatigue) and/or hormonal. For instance, today I slept until after 1:00 in the afternoon, which is pretty late even for me, then I got up, went for iced tea, shopped at the dollar store, came home and ate lunch. By 3:00 I was in bed again, sound asleep with Ali curled up at my shoulder. I didn’t wake up again until after 5:00. I groggily (and grumpily) rushed getting to my World Ventures appointment across town. It was no surprise, the way I was feeling, that my appointment cancelled after my WV sponsor and I waited for about fifteen minutes.

But my sponsor wasn’t moved. It didn’t bother him that he had driven an hour for a meeting that didn’t work out. I was discouraged. I need new tires on my car. The radial belts are showing through both of my front tires, so it’s not wise for me to drive even my half hour to work, but of course I have to. I want to pay two people I owe. I want to start having more money than I need—not less.

Finally I remembered what I read in Think and Grow Rich yesterday. Hill wrote in the 1930’s, “More than 500 of the most successful people America has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them.”

I have experienced this so many times I should know how it works. Just last month this happened to me. I had been holding out to attend the WV’s Mark Accetta Acceleration Training in Kansas City. And things just weren’t coming together to make it happen. Just when I had given up, and had not yet walked away from my desire, it all fell into place. I recall this feeling occurring many times in my life. Many times I have given up, start to throw my fit and toss my hands up in defeat when the thing I want finally happens.

I’m not yet at the step beyond defeat, but in some ironic sense I felt better that I am now steps closer to despair, so I can get to my great success sooner. There have been many times in my life I have felt despair. I learned to turn my defeat into works of art. Here is a poem from one of those times. The painting above goes by the same title and is a visual exploration of the poem. The painting is published in Mikrokosmos 2004. The poem is now submitted to Calyx:




Blood and Water

What did you think the time in the evening shade,
the windows open and the honeysuckle breeze?
You were lying on the couch
a shadow beneath a sheet.
when I crunched my hands into fists
and punched the nose, the eyes, the lips
until broken they bled hot and red
down my face, onto my blouse.
You tried to move quickly, so sleepily
tried to hold my arms stiff behind my back.
I was strong and kept smacking then flopped
on my face crying a bloody puddle
on the hard wood floor. We have come to the lake

to heal. My lips cut and swollen,
I sit stiffly by the fire and stare.
You tell me I am beautiful.
You’d never leave one as lovely as I.
When I smile, it opens a cut on my lip and stings
my nose bruised and swollen shut.
You say you love me. I don’t tell you,

I dream a woman drowned herself
in the black river. Tree seeds floating on the water.
She broke her neck when she dove
from the Eighteenth Street bridge by our house.
Her spirit is caught there in the water. In the night
I am startled by her mourning dove cry.

When I awaken in the tent, the wind is blowing.
I see flashes of lightning and hear the rain.
You open your eyes and ask me what’s wrong.
I had a dream, I say, I can’t remember
what it was. When the wind kicks up
I think the tent is going to fly into the lake.

I ask should we zipper the ceiling window
beneath the clear-plastic cover. The wind
won’t catch so easily. When you rise
in your clumsiness you nearly fall on me,
but you fumble with the zipper and finally
tighten the window closed. When we fall

together back to sleep, I am drowning
and someone is howling like the wind
from far out in the lake. She has jumped
from the stone jetty in a midnight thunderstorm.
The fish are fighting the waves to eat the seeds
from the surface of the water and her hair.

The sun rises sadly behind the thick clouds.
I brush my sore teeth, check for bruises
inside my lips and think of sitting
by the fire in the night. You got up for a drink
of water. Your back to me and the fire,
I watched wanting you to turn around,
afraid to be away from you in the dark.
A light tap on my left shoulder from behind.
When I turned, only trees in the distance,
then a woman covered with seaweed gliding
over the grass, gliding and bending
toward the iron water. Fishermen tell

of a woman who haunts this murky place.
Sometimes at night her nude body rises
to the surface, her breasts bob on the water,
and lilies float at her willowy feet. She’s so lovely
the men still and stare. When they paddle toward
her face her mouth is missing. Fish have torn bits
of her battered lips until a grimace remains
and a moan sounds from low within the lake.

This morning she walks sadly
beside me through the drizzling rain
out to the shore where the two of us
watch waves work to haul themselves up
out of the frightening, deep water.